honeylemondrop 's review for:

The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller

4.0

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While this book may be triggering to some and some may argue that it even glamorizes eating disorders—to which I disagree with—I enjoyed this book. The feelings he had were raw and relatable to things that I’ve experienced. The glamor perceived comes from the character’s own delusion about himself and you can tell every step of the way that the process is hurting him, it’s not glamorous—his fingernails are bloodied and gross. By the end we learn just how much damage it did to himself. This book is a great example of how you can’t trust a biased narrator and therefore must read between the lines. What I really loved was that he felt like he was very self aware of himself before realizing some of his selfishness and biases. I read a complaint that said his recovery process was not detailed enough, but I think if it had been more detailed it would just repeat the same messages. The point was that it was a difficult conscious effort for him to get better. His interactions with the other boys in his school—both with those he loved and hated were so meaningful and pointed out the pressures put on boys to fit into the box of masculinity. Although most of the time we were just in Matt’s head.